Introduction
Persona 5 is an upcoming RPG created by Atlus, and it’s the sixth installment in the Persona series. It’s currently scheduled for a 2015 release in both North America and Japan, arriving to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles. If you aren’t familiar with the Persona series, it is actually a part of the Megami Tensei franchise.
Gameplay
In Persona 5 you will get to live out a full year in the life of a high school boy who has this crazy ability that allows him to summon different Personas. No, it’s not just a split-personality disorder, this character has a unique ability in the video game world. Get ready for some dungeon exploration, with both fixed and randomly generated environments to explore.
Persona 5 will include many features you may have experienced in the previous games, such as the ability to jump across gaps or run to cover. As someone who never played a previous Persona game, the experience will be very much different from other role-playing games. The turn-based attack system is even different, as characters get two weapon types (a gun and melee weapon) AND their Personas.
Official Gameplay Trailer
If you have played Persona 3 and 4 then you will be familiar with the Social Link element, which is making a return in Persona 5, although it will be slightly different.
There are more game modes featured in Persona 5, such as Cooperation and Sneak Modes. Puzzles are supposed to more difficult this time around, as they were designed in a way that makes it harder to complete the game. If you haven’t played previous Persona games you won’t notice, but if you have, then expect a tougher challenge.
Plot and Story
The teenager protagonist you play as has just transferred to Shujin High School in Tokyo, where he meets new friends but mainly feels suppressed by his current environment. His feelings of being suppressed influence him to turn into “The Phantom” at night, wearing a mask and packing a pistol.
He’s not alone though, as he has two friends who wear masks, one wearing a cat mask and the other wearing a skull mask. Kind of creepy, right? Their weapons of choice are shotguns and a machine gun, and the three of them are a force to be reckoned with! It looks like they will carry out heists and discover some strange stuff on their journey, but those details aren’t clear yet.
Just like the previous titles, this one is centered around the high school, where the three friends try to escape the societal norms and express themselves. They do this by committing crimes, which makes them somewhat like real-world teenagers.n
The Development of Persona 5
Rumors about Persona 5 started six years ago, in 2009, when Katsura Hashino was listed on Sony’s mobile website as the video game’s director. Actual development of the upcoming role-playing game didn’t start until 2010, and this was confirmed by Katsura Hashino in a 2012 interview with Famitsu. It’s good to hear a lot of the people involved in the previous Persona games were brought back to work on this one, including character designer Shigenori Soejima and composer Shoki Meguro.
Unlike a lot of video games, Persona 5 is built on a custom built game engine, which explains why it’s taken so long for them to create the game. In 2012, Hashino said the game was far from being complete, and in 2015 it’s still not released, so he wasn’t lying. If you’re a serious fan of anime then you will be pleased to hear the cut-scenes were all created by Production I.G.
Graphics and Visuals
Persona 5 will be styled in a way similar to the previous title, but this game will feature a red theme that’s intended to give off a harsh vibe. Still, the game is designed to be more “thematically approachable” for newcomers, so it doesn’t matter if you played one of the previous titles. The overall theme is set to give players a mix of emotions, leaving the audience inspired to take on their own problems in the real-world. As you can see from the screenshots and teaser trailer, the game will feature a lot of the color red!
Originally, the characters were rendered to look realistic like in Catherine, but they changed their mind as it didn’t really fit the Persona series. Sounds like a good choice, because fans aren’t expecting those type of graphics in Persona 5, and the developer went through a trial and error process before finding the right style.
Conclusion – Release Date
If you’re reading this then there’s a good chance you’ve been waiting a long time for Persona 5. Especially since the original release date was Winter 2014, and the first teaser trailer was revealed in 2013. The first gameplay trailer was revealed in February, but fans were expecting to see more of the upcoming RPG at E3 and were disappointed when nothing knew popped up. However, fans in Japan can look forward to more information this week at the D23 Expo.
There hasn’t been an official release date announcement, but some online sources claim the game will launch anytime from October to December. Although some other source say it will be a Q1 2016 release, so let’s just ignore the speculation and wait as that’s a broad statement. However, we’re expecting the developer to announce the release date for Persona 5 soon, especially as the holidays are creeping up and it can be a huge success around Christmas time.
